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For our May readings, we’re delighted to welcome two brilliant Edinburgh-based poets to Shore Poets – Alan Gillis and Sarah Stewart. They’ll be joined by Rob MacKillop, performing a world premier of The Manfred Suite by guitarist-composer, Gordon Ferries. Please join us on the last Sunday of the month for a great line up. If you’d like to read a poem alongside our trio of wonderful poets, please bring a poem with you and put your name in the hat at the door – we’ll pick a ‘wildcard’ poet to open the evening.

Sunday 27th May 2018 7pm (doors open 6.30pm)

Oh! Outhouse, 12a Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh, EH1 3LY

Admission: £5 (concessions £3)

Please be there in plenty of time to get a seat. Unfortunately, fire regulations mean we have to turn people away if the room becomes overcrowded.

MAIN POET: ALAN GILLIS

Alan Gillis is from Belfast and now lives in Scotland, where he teaches English at The University of Edinburgh. He has published four poetry collections with The Gallery Press: Scapegoat (2014), Here Comes the Night (2010), Hawks and Doves (2007) and Somebody, Somewhere (2004), which won the Strong Award for Best First Collection in Ireland. He has also been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot prize, and for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. In 2014 he was selected as a ‘Next Generation Poet’ by the Poetry Book Society in the UK. As a critic he is author of Irish Poetry of the 1930s (2005), and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry (2012), both published by Oxford University Press. From 2010-2015 he was editor of Edinburgh Review. A Selected Poems entitled Scapegoat and Other Poems was published in the USA by Wake Forest Press in 2016.

SHORE POET: FRANK GLYNN

Frank has been writing poetry and prose for many years, with several novels in his drawer. He plays violin and viola in several ensembles around Edinburgh, in The Whole Shebang, in Holm, and in the St Andrew Orchestra. He is the music facilitator for Shore Poets.

NEW POET: SARAH STEWART

Sarah Stewart is a writer and editor based in Edinburgh. She was a UNESCO City of Literature Writer in Residence in Krakow in 2017, and her poetry has appeared in Anon, Gutter, The Honest Ulsterman, Mslexia, New Writing Dundee, The Pickle Jar, The Scotsman, and in the anthologies Be The First To Like This: New Scottish Poetry and Best Scottish Poems 2014. Her first pamphlet, Glisk, was published by Tapsalteerie this month.

MUSICIAN: ROB MACKILLOP

Rob MacKillop is guitar player with a wealth of experience in different styles and periods, from medieval Scottish music on lute, through to free improvisation on acoustic archtop guitar. For his visit to the Shore Poets he will be showcasing a new guitar (if it arrives from the luthier in time!), and will include a new improvisation based on the poetry readings he hears at the meeting. Rob will be playing a world premier of a specially commissioned piece by guitarist-composer, Gordon Ferries. It is a five-minute piece for classical guitar, based on the Byron play, Manfred.

WILDCARD SPOT AND THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE
The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. And it is a most excellent lemon cake. (Occasionally, we also have poetry books in the raffle, and are very grateful to the donors thereof.)

We should have a wildcard spot this month. Please mention to the person selling tickets that you’d like to put your name in the hat (ideally we will ask you, but sometimes we forget to ask and then we feel sad once we remember our omission). Bring a poem to read in case you’re chosen! You’ll have three minutes (this includes any preamble or introduction – it’s a good idea to time yourself in advance to make sure you’re within the time limits).

See you on 27th May!

Useful information:
1) we have a mailing list, and if you haven’t signed up yet, here’s your chance: just click right here and fill in the few bits of information. This is usually only for event notifications and things like ‘looking for slam/open night participants’. You can unsubscribe anytime you want to, although we would be sad if you did.
2) Our email address (take out spaces on either side of the @) is shorepoetsedinburgh @ gmail.com. Emails sent to any other email address go to the great rubbish bin in the virtual sky.

We were really pleased that so many of you came along to our April Open Night last month, and would like to take this opportunity to say thank you once again to everyone who performed. We hope you’ll all head out and visit us again this month, as we have a spectacular line up for May:

Our headline poet is Jacob Polley. Jacob is originally from Carlisle, but now lives in St Andrews, where he lectures in creative writing at the University. His three collections of poetry are The Brink (2003), Little Gods (2006) and The Havocs (2012), and in 2009 he also published a novel, The Talk of the Town – all published by Picador. Jacob’s poetry has been twice shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize; it won an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 2012. All of his collections have been Poetry Book Society Recommendations.

Our Shore Poet this months is Hamish Whyte. For the past thirty years Hamish has run Mariscat Press, and he has edited several anthologies, including Mungo’s Tongues: Glasgow Poems 1630-1990, An Arran Anthology, and Kin: Scottish Poems about Family.
Hamish’s pamphlet Christmasses was published by Vennel Press in 1998. His long poem Window on the Garden was published as a book jointly by Essence Press and Botanics Press in 2006. Shoestring Press published A Bird in the Hand in 2008 and The Unswung Axe in 2012.

And our new poet for May is Pippa Goldschmidt. Pippa is best known for her novel The Falling Sky, published by Freight Books in 2012 and shortlisted for the 2012 Dundee Book Prize. However, she also writes poetry and short fiction, and has won various accolades for her writing in all genres – including a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2011/12.

YOU could read alongside these brilliant folk, in one of our TWO wildcard poet slots. Just bring a poem along, and put your name in the hat at the door!

We’ll also have live music from The Whole Shebang, and our famous-for-a-reason lemon cake raffle!

We’re starting the new year with a bang this month at Shore Poets: January! Our headline reader is Helena Nelson.

As well as being a poet and critic, Helena also founded the wonderful Happenstance Press. Her two collections of poetry are Starlight on Water and Plot and Counter-plot. The former was joint winner of the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize; the latter is her most recent collection, published by Shoestring Press in 2010. Helena has also self-published two short pamphlets of light verse.

I love reading and writing poetry. I enjoy light verse very much, as well as the heavier variety, and I specially favour lyrical, musical poetry. I can’t write to order: I have to wait until inspiration strikes, but after that I beat the poem into shape remorselessly. As an editor, I love talking to other writers about their work; I love the fascination of seeing a poet develop, grow in confidence and finally soar. I think being a good reader of poetry is just as important as writing well: that’s why I continue to review widely. And finally I think poets, like most other people, need to cultivate a sense of humour to stay sane. The themes I explore include love, loss, anorexia, fun, poetic personae.